Opening doors — Keeping them open
40 Years of the United Methodist Commission on the Status and Role of Women
By Elliott Wright
Women were few at my theological seminary in the 1960s – 15 at most during the span of those three years. Most planned to become Christian educators or missionaries, two of the church-related vocations available to women. The Methodist Church had approved full clergy standing for women in 1956 and female pastors were still rarities. There was a constant buzz at school about the two women candidates for elder’s orders. Even if ordained, professional opportunities were culturally limited in the appointive system; what is more, masculine language dominated theology and male attitudes permeated the structures of Methodism.
The picture dramatically changed over the ensuing decades. By the half-century mark of full ordination there would be some 12,000 women clergy in the denomination, including bishops. The first woman, Marjorie Mathews, was elected to the episcopacy in 1980. Today, as many women as men attend seminary, and inclusive language in theology and biblical translation is common, if not standard. The shifts in attitudes and practices resulted from a combination of forces, including the civil rights and women’s rights movements. In 1972, the church itself claimed its responsibility to promote women’s equality by establishing the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women (GCSRW).
Broad Mandate
More than an agency for promoting women clergy, the commission’s 40 years has nurtured women leaders; confronted discrimination, sexual harassment and abuse and institutional sexism, and lifted up women’s issues. Some of its most significant work has been in the area of education about the value of inclusive speech and outlooks. United Methodist Women, an organization of lay women committed to mission, worked hard for the creation of the commission as a measure of justice.
There was some precedent and great need for such a commission in Methodism. John Wesley, the 18th century English Methodist founder, praised the Christian “call” of women. He permitted women to take major roles in the “classes” he organized. Early Methodist women in England and the United States could pray, witness and “exhort” in public but could not become preachers or qualify as clergy. The 19th century church was not as kind to women as was Wesley. “The woman of the early 19th century had suffered such social and religious repression that she was usually blocked from all formal participation in church life.”
Women turned to the emerging Sunday school as one place they could exercise their Christian call. Wesley also promoted a diaconal (service) role for women and in both England and the United States. This practice would be continued by women’s home and foreign missionary societies in the late 19th century. Education and service join hands in the enormous work women did in building U.S. and international networks of schools, colleges and medical institutions. Their labors were not always valued, and sometimes resented, by the male church hierarchy.
A Continuing Asset
The Commission on the Status and Role of Women had no easy task getting a foothold, and has always received too few resources to adequately fulfill its mandates. In response, it did what any successful Methodist entity does: It became a valuable, continuing asset by organizing on the local and annual conference levels. It opened doors that had been shut or that women had not realized were there. And the challenge continues beyond the 40th anniversary. A recent study indicates that women clergy today earn less than male counterparts and face uphill struggles in finding equity in pastoral appointments. Gender discrimination is not entirely a thing of the past in congregations or the church at large.
The greatest value of the commission is found in the lives of those influenced by its vision of an inclusive United Methodist community. One of those people is Harriett Jane Olson, chief executive of United Methodist Women. She warmly recalls the significance of annual conference commission work in her professional and spiritual journey.
“As a young adult learning my way into the church, [the commission] was my very first connection at the annual conference level,” she says. “I was invited to attend a meeting just as I was thinking about women in the Bible and in theology and the role of gender in shaping how theologians have interpreted the biblical message for centuries. I participated in monitoring at my annual conference session and that was an ‘ah-ha’ moment for me as I thought about how our language both expresses what we are thinking and influences our thoughts and perceptions.
“I am grateful for my experience with the commission for giving me tools that helped me think about how what I was learning connected to the worship life of my church and kept me engaged, by head and heart.”
In these sentiments, Olson speaks for a host of United Methodists.
Elliott Wright is an author who has written for and about
The United Methodist Church for more than a half-century.
1 The history of women Methodist preachers and ordination is extremely complex given the many traditions represented by today’s United Methodist Church. The Methodist Episcopal Church in 1924 permitted women to become local deacons or elders, but there were no such rights in the ME Church, South. The small Methodist Protestant Church had extended ordination to women prior to the merger of these three denominations in 1939. Full clergy rights were recognized by The Methodist Church in 1956 and reaffirmed in 1968 when that church joined with the Evangelical United Brethren to form The United Methodist Church.
2 Robert W. Lynn and Elliott Wright, The Big Little School: 200 Years of the Sunday School, Abingdon, 1980, p. 155.